Lost in the Mix
by bienvenu
Summary: It is 1983 and there is a serial killer loose in Santa Barbara. Shawn gets lost in the mix of the commotion, will he make it out alive or will Henry figure out the convoluted mind of the killer before he gets the opportunity to take the detectives only son away from him? Whump.


Authors Note:

OK this is a huge step for me and this idea has been bumbling around in my head for a long time so any suggestions on how you want the story to go or if it is moving at a good pace or not is very successful. I am going to make the killer like H.H. Holmes, the first serial killer in America. GO Chicago!

I think this is self-explanatory but, I don't own Psych!

Henry is loved his life. He had a beautiful wife, a great job where he got to make a real difference in peoples' lives and he had a great son. There was no doubt his son was talented. He could identify if his dad was driving around the block just to put asleep when he was one. He would only play with the most expensive toys and could tell when they switched his baby food to the bargain brand. He loved him even more for all of that.

Shawn was only a few months away from starting kindergarten and it seemed that every other hour he would bring it up. "Hey dad, you know I am going to school soon so I have to learn all about what you do." That was endearing but then he would use it to his own advantage. "Since I am going to school soon you need to give me that ice cream." That one was just uncreative.

Henry's workload had just increased recently so he was seeing less and less of his son. There was an increase in disappearances recently that were completely unconnected other than the fact that they were all women and children. Those scenes were always the most heart retching, telling the parents they were going to do anything to find their lost child but then the next week the wife would be gone. It looked like the husband was to blame but them another woman would go missing then their child as well. It just didn't make sense. The first victim was named Julia Wiles; she was in her early 30s and was a real plain woman, nothing special. Her neighbors said she was new to town and a real loner. No attachments. Nothing could be made out of it. Either there was a mass migration of people recently or something sinister was up.

This is what he had to work with every day. Then he had to go up to his wife while he was playing with his child and tell her he would only have five minutes before he had to leave again. When they had magical moments as a family like when he took Shawn to Disney and saw his eyes light up like a Christmas tree and wanted nothing more than to grow his family and this joy. Madeline would always bring up moments like when he didn't see his family for a week when Ying Yang stopped through town and killed an innocent girl and effectively messing up the mind of the head detective Max Hail enough to cause him to quit the force and become a professional bass fisherman. He was broke one year later.

So this would be his life, coming home late from a long day of work to his semi-understanding wife and only child. He was okay with that. Maddy knew all the basic self-defense and safety protocol in case anything was to happen to her or Shawn, but he was trying and failing to get Shawn to just be a little more careful whenever he would walk up to a stranger and strike up a conversation. He seemed to be infatuated with pineapple recently. He was just weary with all the disappearances happening recently.

He was at a slump in his work one day when something came to his mind. There was a huge 100 year anniversary of Santa Barbara's official founding this summer that the city had been planning for years. There was new condominium building rising out of nowhere, and Lake Front homes where spreading like wildfire. There was going to be a carnival, and a vast increase in city spending which meant that Santa Barbara was growing, they even maid the local college into a branch of the University of California branch. People were flocking here, not just any people but young women and new families looking for a safe and beautiful life. Santa Barbara was the new southern California location for an urban killer. He did a quick run through for suspicious looking houses and apartment buildings popping up near the fair grounds and found a few hits. New houses that looked more like funeral homes, a very not up to code hotel and a few houses. He even stopped by one of the houses only to find a charming young man who was very accommodating when he asked about the missing people. He felt silly talking to this man because he was just not the killer type. The man even had a kid Shawn's age, only he lived with his ex-wife in Chicago. He left the house felling really silly, but not unsure somehow the cases where linked.

Maddy spent the next few days on the road for her job which meant it was "bring your child to work day" for the next week. He wasn't ever going to tell Maddy this but he let a young rookie look after Shawn when he was on call. Then the case started getting interesting. One woman who was missing was found dead. She was stuffed in chimney and burned, but not alive. It appeared that her cause of death was suffocation by a mysterious gas. She was stuffed in so tight her internal organs didn't burn but her overcoat and wallet were left unharmed. She was supposed to be with her 3 year old son at the time of her disappearance and the child was nowhere to be found. Luckily for the SBPD, they had the best coroner in the state of California. He found a fragment embedded in her nails and determined it was a piece of expensive brick only used in new homes. Only five homes in the city had that brick, and he had met one of the home owners before; the young guy from his preliminary search. He was going to have to talk to him again. Before he could there was a call of arson of a building and he sped off to the scene.

_ Meanwhile inside the SBPD break room Shawn was drawing on a wall with a green crayon while Vince Olaf the Rookie in charge of Shawn was talking on the phone. _

"Yeah boss he just left to the arson scene," whispered Olaf.

"Is the Kid with you?"

"Always, it is like clockwork. The guy didn't even check to make sure I had him, probably won't even remember which rookie he left him with."

"Great, you know what to do. If you deliver him to me you will get you're agreed upon fee."

"There are just so many stupid people in the world now a day."


End file.
